How to make email link expire after X minutes in php? - php

Question

I am working on email link expire after some X minutes where X denotes some random date_time. so my motive is to expire the the link after some time what ever I set the date_time in side the $expire_date.
So I just created dummy code myself just in order to sure my code works or not.
$currentDateTime = new \DateTime();
$currentDateTime-> setTimezone(new \DateTimeZone('Asia/kolkata'));
$now = $currentDateTime-> format(' h:iA j-M-Y ');
$expire_date = "02:59PM 26-Mar-2019";
if($now > $expire_date)
{
echo " link is expired";
}
else{
echo " link still alive ";
}
I guess I am missing something in the above code, somehow the above code isn't working if anyone would point out the right direction or some better implementation it would be great.

Answer 1

You are comparing the times as strings. This does not work, as your first formatted string has a leading space.
Instead, try either removing the whitespace, or better, compare the times as DateTime objects:
$timezone = new \DateTimeZone('Asia/kolkata');
// Create the current DateTime object
$currentDateTime = new \DateTime();
$currentDateTime-> setTimezone($timezone);
// Create the given DateTime object
$expire_date = "02:59PM 26-Mar-2019";
$expireDateTime = \DateTime::createFromFormat($expire_date, 'h:iA j-M-Y');
// Compare the objects
if($currentDateTime > $expireDateTime)
{
echo " link is expired";
}
else{
echo " link still alive ";
}

Answer 2

If you want to compare dates in PHP, your best bet is to use UNIX time stamps. A UNIX time stamp is the number of seconds since the UNIX epoch (00:00:00 Thursday, 1 January 1970).
time() will return the current UNIX time stamp.
strtotime() will convert a date string into a UNIX time stamp.
So replacing these two lines:
$now = $currentDateTime-> format(' h:iA j-M-Y ');
$expire_date = "02:59PM 26-Mar-2019";
With these:
$now = time();
$expire_date = strtotime("02:59PM 26-Mar-2019");
Should solve your problem.

Answer 3

You are comparing date strings which will not work. You have to parse the string to a datetime object or timestamp before you can compare these values.
For example, using timestamps:
$expire_date = "02:59PM 26-Mar-2019";
if (time() > strtotime($expire_date)) {
echo "link is expired";
} else {
echo "link still alive ";
}

Answer 4

All you have to do is use strtotime function and add inside date function and here you can specify day, hour, minutes, seconds as a perimeter. This way you can set time manually by adding +5 minutes or so on..
date_default_timezone_set("Asia/Kolkata"); // set time_zone according to your location
$created = "2020-08-14 17:52"; // time when link is created
$expire_date = date('Y-m-d H:i',strtotime('+1 minutes',strtotime($created)));
//+1 day = adds 1 day
//+1 hour = adds 1 hour
//+10 minutes = adds 10 minutes
//+10 seconds = adds 10 seconds
//To sub-tract time its the same except a - is used instead of a +
$now = date("Y-m-d H:i:s"); //current time
if ($now>$expire_date) { //if current time is greater then created time
echo " Your link is expired";
}
else //still has a time
{
echo " link is still alive";
}